Leaders will find Dr.
Jack Newman's Guide to Breastfeeding a valuable addition to their
personal libraries and especially useful for helping calls. Dr. Newman
is a father of four breastfed children and a pediatrician on the Professional
Advisory Board of LLLI. Teresa Pitman, mother of four breastfed children,
LLL Leader for more than 20 years, and well-known Canadian author, collaborates
with Dr. Newman to write a comprehensive and detailed volume designed
for mothers and for health care professionals.

Though the authors focus
primarily on solving breastfeeding difficulties, they also cover breastfeeding
basics, calling three to four years of breastfeeding "normal"
and in other ways showing clear support for many aspects of LLLI philosophy.
For example, Dr. Newman gives a touching account of how he and his wife
tried the "cry it out" sleep training advice: "When our
son was over two years of age, we thought we would try it again. (We
were slow learners, but our excuse is that we weren't getting much sleep.)
We finally gave in, as we heard him cry from his crib, 'This is your
little boy, Daniel. Why are you doing this?' We can learn a lot from
our children, if we let ourselves ... it wasn't easy to be awakened
every night, night after night. But after all is said and done, it was
for the best."

This book contains especially
critical information for mothers and babies with medical issues. When
mothers need to make a decision on the safety of breastfeeding while
taking medication, for example, this book can inform them of the value
of human milk and the breastfeeding relationship as well as the hazards
of artificial baby milk and pharmaceuticals. Leaders and other breastfeeding
counselors seeking more information on breastfeeding an adopted baby,
breastfeeding and medications, candida albicans, persistent plugged
ducts and mastitis, or stubborn sore nipples, will also find the information
they need.

Unfortunately few references
are included, the authors choosing instead to base the book primarily
on Dr. Newman's vast clinical experience with women and children at
Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children and in Africa. However, mothers'
stories, beautiful photographs, and selections from literature on breastfeeding
are woven throughout. Toronto, where Dr. Newman's breastfeeding clinics
are located, is a multicultural city, and this is reflected in his pictures
of women and babies. There are excellent photographs of good latches,
poor latches, breast compression, using a lactation aid, latching twins,
cup feeding newborns, finger feeding, Raynaud's Phenomenon of the nipple,
and toddler nursing. In addition, a directory points mothers to other
resources including LLL Canada, Dr. Newman's clinic, and Internet Web
sites with information on drugs and breastfeeding.

The authors mince no words
in discussing artificial baby milk (ABM), ABM manufacturers, and how
ABM became embedded in popular and medical culture. The authors illustrate
how ABM feeding is aggressively marketed to physicians, dieticians,
nurses, and other health care professionals, as well as to parents.

Obviously, this book does
not replace THE WOMANLY ART OF BREASTFEEDING as a nursing mother's reference
guide to the normal course of breastfeeding. Most Leaders will probably
find Dr. Newman and Pitman's book most helpful for reference use rather
than for their lending library, though a Leader certainly may wish to
lend this book to a member who anticipates adoptive breastfeeding, or
has certain medical issues. In-depth coverage of medical issues such
as "How to Diagnose an Abscess" could be overwhelming to some
mothers. This should be kept in mind when recommending the book to a
specific mother in your group.

I must note that while the
authors reinforce LLLI philosophy in many areas, Dr. Newman does state
some opinions LLL does not share. For example, he recommends a more
casual way of introducing solids, and has concerns with the baby who
refuses solids for a year. In addition, he feels that a soother (pacifier)
can be useful when a baby has an especially strong need to suck. In
particular, Leaders should continue to refer to LLL publications for
positioning advice and treating sore nipples, as the advice offered
in Dr. Newman and Pitman's book differs from LLLI's. While Dr. Newman
recommends the cross-cradle hold as the "easiest way of achieving
the best latch," that is not the recommendation of most lactation
experts.

The tone of this book is
like a cross between Mark Twain, Dr. Robert Bradley, and THE WOMANLY
ART OF BREASTFEEDING. In a bottle-feeding culture where "formula
is just as good," breastfeeding mothers and babies confronting
medical challenges can now be armed with the information contained in
Dr. Jack Newman Is Guide to Breastffeeding.

Melissa Young has been
a Leader for over a year with LLL Canada Welland/Port Colborne. She
lives with her husband, Michael, and two children, Heidi and Anna, on
a small farm in Southern Ontario.

Dr.
Jack Newman's Guide to Breastfeeding and
The Ultimate Breastfeeding Book of Answers:
What's the Difference?

By Jake Marcus
Cipolla
Lower Gwynedd, Pennsylvania, USA

Dr. Jack Newman's
Guide to Breastfeeding is published in the United States
as The Ultimate Breastfeeding Book of Answers. The differences
between the two books are far greater than the pretension of
the latter book's title and "Americanization" of the
former's language.

First, the layout
of the US version is quite different from its Canadian sister.
The typeface is more readable and inviting, and quotes from
the book have been added to each page spread to break up the
text. Additional subheads and bullet lists add clarity. Some
subheadings have been changed to sidebars. Even the photographs
are clearer in the US edition. Also the US version contains
more explanatory text and is, overall, more accessible to the
reader.

While there are many
appropriate changes from the Canadian edition (mercifully deleted
is a paragraph that begins "I even know one mother who
would use the pump while driving to and from work..."),
there are some welcome additions in the US title. For example,
the US version of the book has a new paragraph in which Dr.
Newman mentions that grapefruit extract has been promoted for
candida albicans, and expansion of the resources for breastfeeding
help to include not only LLL Canada but also LLLI and many more
Web sites of interest.

Technically speaking,
The Ultimate Breastfeeding Book of Answers is a better
book than Dr. Jack Newman's Guide to Breastfeeding. However,
the important ways in which Dr. Newman's recommendations disagree
with LLLI remain in the US edition (see review).